It made us sick. Made people we loved poor and lonely and dead. But still we nurtured it, we worshipped it. It stopped us from creating and it stopped us from collaborating. We stopped believing we could be healed and we danced through the dark shadows of it’s fires.

Anger. What did the word conjure up for me? It sounded different then. It didn’t sound like weakness. I remember the feeling. Fire in my eyes, I suppose. A deceptively clear sense of purpose. Blood up and ready to, what, throw my hurt a little further?

I don’t like to think about it. The word for me conjures up feelings of loneliness. A drumbeat that recruited my whole body and mind to the message, the call of worthlessness. A demagogue that personalised it’s sermons to my circumstances, that showed me my hurt and used it to justify hurting others. Anger, like hurt, needed me to survive. It said ‘Do this and you will be free’. Anger was a lie.

Yes, anger was a spirit that needed our bodies to survive. It needed our permission to enter but once there it would possess or colleagues, our friends, our family, a stranger on the street. It would distract us long enough for a punch or an ill-considered word and then it used our names as leverage to summon every spirit it knew to every body it found. It whispered demonic words about pride and the worthlessness of others. In this way anger ran governments. In this way the fates of nations were decided. The system stayed stable so long as anger stayed hidden: you could never be angry at anger.

Then suddenly there was forgiveness. At first, dictators called it terrorism; no more hatred of other states to keep them in power. It began as an experiment then gradually became a way of life. Tolerance replaced fear and, rowdy and impatient for real change, love replaced tolerance. Religion wasn’t an excuse for violence; religious politicians refused to vote for any law that left the world as broken as it was or blessed themselves more than others. We sold our weapons in order to fight poverty – a pitchfork for a ploughshare. The security of nations depended not upon destruction but mutually assured compassion.

Love at great cost, grace with no price. I am old enough to remember it. No transition – just chaos. The old order gone – beautiful, beautiful chaos. All of this started from just one act.

There were skeptics. Maybe somewhere there still are. Secret labs in remote locations with luddites working in candlelight trying to find something – anything – that anger can do better than grace.

Now we have a statue in the palace of our government called Anger, depicting a bellowing old man with a knife in his side. One hand raised in a fist, the other holding the knife in. He stands in the middle of the gardens with his back to the sun. Every day groups of children come to see the statue and their teachers ask them the same questions – where is wisdom in the picture? Does the man look happy? How can we help him?

By the statue sits a plaque and on that plaque are written a list of grievances in capital letters, each of them scored out. At the end of the list are the words: Anger is hate. And hatred is never the start of something.

I know you’re afraid. I just didn’t think you were angry.
I know you’ve been lied to. You can put the guns down now; I’m not in any position to hurt you.
That’s right. I’m Arab, I’m Muslim. Some people might tell you I’m violent or that I hate you. All Muslims are psychopaths, yeah, I’ve heard that. But look a little closer. I have two arms, one head and I’m not holding a gun.

I’m going to assume it’s not my colour.
It’s – ok. It’s what I believe, you said that. But how do you know what that is?
It’s not what I believe that is the issue here, it’s what people told you I believe. No, I’m not picking apart what you’re saying, but, admit it: I’ve never told you what I believe.
You’re afraid. So let’s start with that. You shouldn’t have to be afraid. Let’s start with the assumption that this whole situation is wrong. How did we get into it?

My name is Abdul by the way. I’m 29. I have three kids. My wife is called Salma. I like fast cars and chess. Kinda weird that way.

You wanna know something?
I admire you.
I mean I think you’re totally wrong but I admire you.
I left my country because I hated what it was being turned into. Men who thought they were gods, treating women and children like waste, bombing villages. I couldn’t stay. I took my family. I walked away.

But you, you couldn’t leave. You think your country is being taken over. And you’re fighting for it, I know. I know that exact same look. I just didn’t think I’d ever see it this way round.
Some of those things you’re fighting for, I never could. You’d be killed if you said one word. I know you think there’s no freedom of speech anymore but, then again, here we are. I saw you on the marches. I know where you stand. And apparently people can tell you whatever they like about what I believe, so maybe there’s freedom of speech after all, right?

I actually think I agree with you on some stuff. Has it occurred to you that maybe a conservative Muslim and a conservative Atheist and a conservative Christian care about the exact same issues?
Your politicians, if they cared about what you care about, they’d be trying to unite us not divide us. Someone told you I was your enemy. Why? It’s not because they care about the same issues as us. It’s because they want you scared. You’re safe when you’re scared.

Let’s assume I’m wrong. In fact let’s assume that I hate you, that I’m brainwashed. Where would that come from? Obviously it can’t be God, I mean, God’s on your side right? So not God. It’s gotta be a man or the devil. And I’m not sure we’re meant to listen to them are we?

So what about you? Did God tell you to hate me? Does the word ‘Muslim’ appear anywhere in the bible, even one time? If it doesn’t, then where did you hear it? Who said it? Was it God, man or the devil? And if it wasn’t God then who are you following?

You probably think I’m lying to you. That at the very least I must think you’re insane. The truth is I don’t know if you are or not. I come from a country where the television, the newspapers, the radio are all controlled by one man. He’s the first thing you hear in the morning and the last thing you hear at night. He tells you he’s a kind man. He tells you that the Christians and the Jews want to kill you. He tells you again and again that he’s a good man. Some people believe it. Does that make them insane?

You know what I believe?
It doesn’t matter where you’re from; in their eyes, you’re a problem. My president tells me that you’re the problem. And your president tells you that I’m the problem. They can’t both be right but they can both be wrong. This is about power. They know that if we want to take that away from them all we have to do is agree.

We can talk, right now. You can tell me what you believe. I can tell you what I believe. We can talk. Or you can shoot me dead if you want to but don’t tell me it’s about freedom of speech.
You know it’s only a matter of time until someone joins us anyway. Someone else who’s afraid. Maybe next it’ll be the Atheists vs the Muslims or the Agnostics vs the Christians. Someone who sees what a dangerous situation this is and decides it’s time to stop it, deport it, kill it, anything but reason with it.

So you can pull up a chair. We can listen, we can talk.
Or you can pull the trigger.

They tortured children for painting slogans on a wall. Remember, this is how it began. Children painting slogans. They threw them in prison and the counting began.

One.

We were protesting in Marjeh square. There were placards. Songs in our hearts that would soon be replaced by bullets in our chests. But history was with us, the world was with us. They had gone too far; now everything was going to change. We were excited then.

Two.

Before it was our homes. Now whole cities were on fire. Aleppo started to burn.

World leaders said stop. But Aleppo is still burning.

Everyone saw it. Yet people took to the streets to insist their leaders do nothing. ‘Stop the war’ they said, whatever that meant – should we go back to how things were? They have been killing us for years and calling it peace. Oh brave men with your brave flags and your brave words – where were you when we were dying?

Three.

They dropped chemical weapons on schools. Then they told the world they’d stop. So where are the ones they killed since? Where are the women and the children they killed with the bombs they didn’t have?

Perhaps because we had no oil, the west did not intervene. But others did. Islamic State were one. We didn’t know them. They came from outside. They had never lived with us but they fought us and killed us, for what? For the pleasure of fighting Assad? Brothers, go back to your families. We have nothing left to steal.

Four.

My neighbours shouted his name as they dug him from the ruins of his school. I felt sure that it couldn’t have been him. I remembered shouting his name six years ago. My boy, when he was born. My boy, when he was pulled from the rubble. I crumbled to the ground and shook, weeping. I wasn’t a man, I was only a father. I couldn’t speak to my brother, I couldn’t speak to my wife.

Four years had passed in which this could have been averted. As our so-called leaders sat in palaces they didn’t deserve, my boy was dead. He was six years old – how was he to blame for the war?

Five.

The world carved us up on maps. They talked about transition and wrote communiques about a diplomatic solution. Our government scored out their promises before they even said them. The world said “No more” and spoke about ceasefires. Ceasefires that didn’t apply to us. They were targeting terrorists, they said. Who knew there were terrorists sleeping in our babies’ cots or inside the walls of our schools? Who knew there were terrorists in every single hospital? They called it a cease-fire. Who knew that peace could be a weapon? Another cease fire, another way to kill us.

They passed motions, organised summits.
They said the only way forward was with Assad. I said you have never been to Syria, have you?

Six.

I had felt the building shake before but this time was different. From my window I saw the white helmets charging down my street like soldiers but with blankets instead of weapons and bandages instead of flags. When the world ran away from Aleppo’s fires they ran into them to save people from bombs that didn’t exist. They showed us how to be heroes. I took my helmet from under the floorboards and ran down the stairs screaming ‘Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar’. It was a prayer for something better and gentler and kinder.
Six.
Aleppo is still burning, what’s left of it is still burning.
Six years.
When people are just numbers, someone has to count.

We had both read the bible.
The assurance of things hoped for.
The conviction of things not seen, she expected me to say.

But what is it.

When I studied science, my friends would ask me – how can you believe? We discussed the matter rationally. As though faith existed within the bounds of something. As though faith were just perspective. I admire your faith, they said to me.

When I was an activist, my friends would ask me – how do you balance your politics and your faith?
We all wanted to change something. My faith made me sceptical, my faith made me challenge the norms that were handed down to me. Faith made me an unbeliever. I didn’t believe that people’s value was found in how they looked, how much they were paid or how well they could cope. When there was famine or joblessness or suicide, when there was self-harm or self-hate, when I was told this was the truth, that anxiety would win and hunger and poverty would win, faith whispered: Don’t believe in everything.

When I was wrong it was a mirror. When I was sick He was my salve.

What is faith, she asked me.

I remembered working with a charity that mentored young people in the arts. After each event they recounted the people they had met: Ashley’s job interview was tomorrow; Jasmine was having trouble staying clean; Martin was cutting again. Drugs and alcohol were recurring themes. They thanked God for the privilege of meeting strangers and they asked Him to change their city. They wept as they prayed but I have never felt such optimism. Like something was about to happen.

I remembered seeing a woman praying outside my window. She was walking the streets of her city, quietly calling forth the future. She was dressed normally. She looked like everyone else. But something was different.

I will offer you a hundred days of perfect anger for a night of perfect passion. I will make you promises so earnestly and so often that you will always wonder if I meant them or if my pull like your stay was simply psychological. I haven’t written you a poem. I will never look inside myself for the reasons you said no.

Your hand in my hand, my hand on yours. We will work together. Captivity, like love, takes effort.

I will listen more and speak less and less. Replace every old crack in our relationship with new ones. I will try harder. And harder.

Dear Despot, I began, before backspacing over it. Too emotive, too direct. Too grandiose a title.
Dear Anti- no. He hates being called that.
Department of Infernal Affairs. No.
To Whom It May Concern. Yes.
Enter.
I resign.

You can dock my wages or refuse to give me a reference. I know I run the risk that you will crucify me in the media. Go on. Tell the world I’m a terrorist or a paedophile or a disgruntled civil servant. It doesn’t matter. I am gone. I cannot work for you another day.

I have carried out every instruction you have given me. Written every letter, doctored every file. I have used children and pestilence and bombs but what you ask of me now is wrong. Our partnership is over. I ask only that you consider my service to date and allow us to part ways amicably.

Perhaps because I am a man, I did not take issue with your obvious hatred of women. When you instructed me to condemn, I created products to flatter. I filled every billboard and web page in the world with the message that beauty is worth. I created magazines that wrote the rest for me, filled with adverts and reviews that never told what I was selling. Every purchase reinforced our message. I worked and worked, coming up with new ideas every day like self-harm, eating disorders and so-called sexual revolution. I made sure the men believed it first. Never did I rest. I wrote the gender pay gap into law, filling the gaps between the statutes with unrepealable silence.
And it worked. Nation after nation exchanged their glory for nakedness and covered their nakedness with shame. Then feminism came and you blamed me for that.

Don’t think I’ve forgotten about the wars. Those bloody wars. So much paperwork. How difficult they were to devise. Target the poor, you said. Children if you can. And I could. I forced people to believe their very survival depended upon providing me with weapons to kill them with. “Forced”! I only showed them the faces of their brothers and sisters, they spat in them themselves. I gave them the chance of brotherhood, they supplied the fear. That’s what I love about free will. It turns science into art.

You always told me I was being too obvious; that I would be found out eventually. I wasn’t. I used their own frailty against them and always covered my tracks. I used intermediaries. Bankers, politicians, clergymen, celebrities – not you obviously, I would never use you. They really can’t see it, you know. They always think the corruption is isolated to just one group. How easy that makes it to simply move on to the next. No, you cannot fault me. In everything I have done I have always been a credit to the service.

All this to say nothing of my work on mental illness, censorship, masculinity and the Middle East. Or on democracy. I doubt I will live to receive a pension but I fail to see how I could have done anything more. Except this. Except this.

You asked me to vote for you. I won’t do it. I won’t. Your request is denied. I will happily proclaim to you the finer points of my work. I am proud of the great skill required, proud of the beauty achieved. As a profession, certainly, but as a choice, a way of life? Do you expect me to close my eyes and call it true? I will not be made a fool of. I will not build my own prison, step inside and give to you the key.

I know I haven’t long left. I know this letter will get to you eventually.
That’s why I’m not sending it to you.

This is just a shout out to my favourite 9 year old, Callum, who is SO cool that we might just need a new word for it. I don’t quite understand how it is possible for someone to be so smart, funny, charasmatic and fun to be around by such a young age, but somehow Callum has done it. Well done Callum.

I want to find love, she tells me, looking straight into me but not really seeing, I think. I want to be loved, she says, and I told her that she was loved, like I was passing on a message.

I see history in her eyes but she never speaks of it. The same girl in another country. Her hands are clean but stained. There are few tents and little rain. The money has run dry but she reaches inside for kindness and treasure. She gives and gives. And never speaks of it.

I want a family, she says and I want that too I said, shivering. I wasn’t in love, I was pretending to be cold.

There is a quality to her voice when she speaks. When she speaks I can hear emotion, a long e, when she speaks it sounds like she is listening. I remember how I felt when I first met her. Now I feel that even more. I say nothing and hope she isn’t listening.

She cries and I cry and the perfect time to hold her comes and stays. I say nothing, let it pass. We argue, flatter, offer each other words of comfort and pray to the God I hold most precious.

What could be so important
that I would leave that room silent
with no regrets?

We are the unco, byous, braw exceptionals!
Push it intae words, bang it doon tae the table in Inglis, this is ma hert, this is ma heid. Whack: Ah’m fae Glesga. Aye! Aye! Aye!

Claimed it, cherished it, chanted it, aye
Never earnt it but
never really looked at it in a mirror
never really mended it, missed it
Jis cherished it kissed it

This is who we are so haud ontae it – the mauments we were guid, see that, see that, that’s Scotland, aye, that’s us. Miners. Inventors. Poleteecians. That’s us. Clearances, aye. Hume. David Hume. That’s us…och its gone again, but did you see it there, aye? Aye.
Get it awa fae ye the mauments we were hertless, racist, cruel, the mauments we didna care, the mauments we looked awa an ravaged your country bare. Aye. Aye. A poke in the ‘aye’. Oor history’s blue and white wi no blood red, oor country’s sober, fat, unfed,
we are the unco byous braw exceptionals
repeat it believe it repeat it believe it
it wisna me
repeat it believe it
it wisna me

See, it wis aw ae us, cept when it wisnae
Close the curtains, open the blogs, let the guid stuff in
Mebbe Scotland’s mair than whit ye think it is
And at the same time? Mebbe Scotland’s less
Close the blogs, open the curtains, let the guid stuff in

Ower muckle poetry oan wan wird politeecs
No jis aye or naw but ane an aw
the kick, the blaw
dinna say your for us or agin us
we ken wir aw saunts an sinners

Came to me in tides.
Water and dirt.
A rush of noise then silence.
Sound and wait.
Just wait.

Standing too close.
It ebbs and it flows.
Silence is song. And water is prose.
And wait
and wait
and wait.

The sand empties and fills like a lung. Like the land is sighing. Like the land is waiting.
Instead of jewels, I have stones. Instead of youth, I have time. Instead of soldiers, I have seashells.
I came for an answer. Not to shout or to throw myself into the water and say that I am done with trust.
Instead of noise, I have truth.